30 April 2010

Super Random お好み焼き!~

Have a happy day dear friends! :)







How to cook your own okonomiyaki!



(nopes, the video doesn't teach you how to cook it coz' I have finished making it hee XD)



You can visit somewhere along Princep Street to make your own お好み焼き!

29 April 2010

A Piece Of Soda

Suddenly felt like that a moment ago...
pop
frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
º¤ø„¸¸„ø¤º°¨¸„ø¤º „¸¨°º¤ø„¸¸„ ¸„ø¤º „¸º¤ø„¸¸„ø¤º°¨¸„ø¤º „¸¨°º¤ø„¸¸„ ¸„ø¤º „¸
The aunties are working very hard! Same goes to uberservice!

p/s: Got the clips! Awesome! Thanks William!

28 April 2010

Suddenly Feel Like Eating Chocolate Ice-Cream

I better go grab some sleep... a bit high now coz' didn't sleep enough ahhahahaha *gua gua gua*

Busy Days!






This one above is a collaboration with my boyfriend! Heeheehee XD!

And today, I got the reply I am waiting for! =)

Thanks! =)



27 April 2010

I Wish You A Great Day Too!

Heehee they are here! *bought this tshirt in Taiwan*




The two pics above are from mina! *cheer chan is for kehan!* =D

And thanks yen for calling me yesterday about the Malaysia trip! I will join you all next time when I am back in June! =D See you all for steamboat this Sunday! =DDDDD

Touched!





Hey Hey Yeah Yeah







22 April 2010

Thanks Shan!

健康促進資訊分享:
醫學系研究所的實驗報告!(總整理) 易產生致癌病毒的食物:(惡物)
一、用 烤的玉米不能吃,百分之百有毒※肝癌
二、過期的食物〈有黴菌〉,含有黃菊毒素〈肝癌〉, 一定要吃新鮮的食物,不要捨不得丟。
三、香腸、熱狗都是致癌物。
四、吃花枝,魷魚就不要吃紅蘿蔔 〈在胃裡中和會形成亞硝酸〉。
五、烤焦的部份都要去掉,很毒。
六、莖類的植物〈如馬鈴薯〉發芽就有毒。
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對身體有益的食物:(良物)
一、綠茶可多喝,可防癌。
二、養樂多可防胃癌,大腸癌。
三、大蒜證實可防癌,效果很好。
四、聖女 小蕃茄可防癌。
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奶茶少喝喔 !!! 你愛喝奶茶嗎?如果你是愛喝奶茶的人請注意囉∼ 營養師答: 奶茶是高糖、高油、高熱量,沒有營養價值可言,是一種垃圾食物。 奶茶加的奶精,多由椰子油製成,喝多了容易發胖,脂肪容易堆積在肚子上,形成中廣體形,很多習慣喝奶茶的人想要減肥,第一件事就是戒奶茶。 椰子油中含大量飽和脂肪酸,會加速體內製造膽固醇,血脂肪也會急速上升,形成血管硬化,長期大量飲用,容易罹患高血壓、糖尿病等慢性病。 曾有統計數字顯示,大量飲用奶茶超過三個月,血脂肪及膽固醇都會升高。 奶茶只是油和糖的結合,因為奶精並非牛奶製成品,奶茶中又有大量糖分,幾乎不含鈣質,根本無法補充鈣質,還對身體有很大的傷害。 奶茶最好不要天天喝,一週頂多喝個一、兩杯解個饞即可‧
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八種去脂減肥的食物
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現代人的飲食多半太過豐富,以致於越來越多人營養過剩身材走樣。
吃,如果選擇正確,那麼您非但不會胖,而且還能幫助您去脂呢。
快來看看吧∼
*凍豆腐: 根據報導,凍豆腐能吸收胃腸道以及全身組織的脂肪,有利脂肪的排泄喔。

*綠豆芽: 含有較高的磷、鐵之外,主要含有大量的水份,多吃綠豆芽,也不容易讓脂肪在皮下形成。

*鳳梨: 鳳梨含有蛋白質分解酵素,具有分解魚、肉的功能,吃過大餐後可以吃些鳳梨。但是體質不適合吃太涼食物的人,要儘量少吃。

*薏仁: 薏仁除了美白治痘外,對水腫型的肥胖也很有幫助喔(孕婦除外∼要禁吃)

*烏賊:烏賊的脂肪含量,每 100g 才有 0.7g ,吃了它要變胖是很困難的。

*木瓜: 木瓜有輕微的興奮作用。 本草綱目記載:木瓜可以去水腫、治腳氣病。

*陳皮: 漢方中的陳皮,對脾肺很好,而且可以幫助消化、排除胃部賬氣、減少腹部脂肪的堆積。但是如果您有心臟或血管毛病的人最好少吃。

*竹筍: 竹筍的特色是低脂、低糖、多粗纖維,可防止便祕。不過竹筍有難溶性的草酸鈣,胃潰瘍的人不可多吃。
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下班後紓解壓力的八個方法! =============================================
上了一天的班,當你拖著疲憊的身子回到家中,如果不懂得如何利用有限的時間做有效的放鬆,日復一日,時間久了會改變人體的免疫系統,使你對抗疾病的免疫能力降低,可能從小到感冒、頭痛、腸胃不適,大到甚至產生潛在的致癌因子、或是過勞所導致的心臟、腦血管的疾病。 所以身為工作忙碌的現代人,不能不注意自己的壓力紓解之道喔! 如何解壓比較好呢? 以下就是告訴您如何利用週一到週五晚間的短短幾個 小 時做有效的放鬆,才能提供您隔一天上班的工作效率。
1. 泡個熱水澡,水溫高約在37到39度左右, 可有效的放鬆繃緊的肌肉與神經。
2.換上寬鬆的衣物,以棉質為主的家居服。女生也請卸除內衣,可著深色的家居服。
3. 室內燈光以黃色為主, 不易刺激眼球,較能舒緩眼部的壓力,也能緩和室內氣氛。
4. 晚餐時以清淡食物為主。避免吃辛辣、油炸食物, 或是停留在胃中時間較長的高蛋白高熱量食物, 以免增加胃腸的負擔。
5. 晚餐後可來點不含酒精、不含咖啡因等刺激性物質的飲料。
6. 睡前將腿抬高,或是腳下墊個枕頭30度、45度或是90度都可。 可有效緩解因為長期的站立或坐姿所造成的下肢血循不良而腫脹。
7. 盡量在晚間十一點到凌晨兩點上床入睡。 如果你真的有很多公事未完成必須通宵的時候, 可以先去睡到兩點以後再起床,因為 十一點到兩點這個時間是人體經脈運行至肝、膽, 若這個時間沒有得到適當的休息,時間久了這兩個器官的不健康就會表現在皮膚上,如粗糙、黑斑、青春痘、黑眼圈的問題。
8. 睡前可以聽一些古典音樂或是輕音樂, 避免心情過度亢奮所導致的夜夢過 多。如果你常為失眠所苦, 臨睡前聽個巴哈的郭德堡變奏曲是個不錯的選擇喔!

酸梅實在是太神奇了!
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衛生署中醫藥委員會主任委員張成國今天表示,熬夜又多吃肉易造成酸性體質,罹患癌症等文明病機率相對增高;民眾應少攝食肉等酸性食物,並避免通宵熬夜。 張成國指出,健康人的血液是呈弱鹼性的,一般初生嬰兒也都屬弱鹼性體液,但隨著體外環境污染及體內不正常生活及飲食習慣,使我們體質逐漸轉為酸性。 百分之八十五的痛風、高血壓、癌症、高脂血症患者,都是酸性體質。 他表示,酸性體質的人稍作運動即感覺疲勞,上下樓梯容易喘,體態是肥胖、下腹突出。 常見的酸性食品包括蛋黃、精緻的西點、乳酪、烏魚子、柴魚、肉類、花生、啤酒。 發育中的少年多吃肉等酸性食物沒關係,但上了年紀的老人則要少吃,但要多吃 小 魚干及蔬菜等鹼性食物,以平衡體質。 他又說,餐飲業及企業常於午后安排午茶時間,但喝茶及咖啡時間最好是上午九時至十一時,這個時候最不傷身,提神效果也最好。常被蚊子咬的人好像也是屬於酸性體質的人。 梅子是我國及日本特產,生產期短,每年四月採收,較耐貯運,低缺乏香 氣,是做醃漬梅用,也是輸往日本或晒乾供製造話梅的原料;常謂梅子可除三毒之效,即除食物的毒 、水的毒 、血的毒。 前二者屬殺菌,第三者是指能 淨化酸性體質的血液;一般健康人的血液,經常保持在中性至微鹼性,此乃直接由食物所造成的結果。 實際上如砂糖、牛肉、白米、酒等酸性食品比較好吃,故一般人常有多吃的情形,若欲以牛乳、海藻類、蔬菜類、酸梅等鹼性食品來中和時,一般需要大量的鹼性食品,才能達到中和的作用。 如要中和 100克 的蛋黃(酸性食品 ),則需 1200克 的洋蔥 或 400克 的甘 藍菜才能達到中和的效果;但如以酸梅來中和時,因含有充分的鈣、鈉、磷、鐵等成分,只需 五克 ,梅肉抽出物只需1公克就很足夠,由於酸梅是強力的鹼性食品,可以達淨化血液的作用,因此,食用梅子對身體有益,尤其是自己製作的喔! 食用梅子好處多多: 1. 下午二點左右,含一粒梅子,治消化不良。 2. 下午三點左右,含一粒梅子,治膽固醇過多 願一切美好事情發生在您的每一天


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五樣好東西-- -顛覆根深蒂固的飲食觀念 -- 請參考!
因緣際會下,有幸聽到吳寶芬講師的健康講座,在贏得滿堂喝采下,是抽絲剝繭地打破我根深蒂固的錯誤飲食觀念。為一改前非,將筆記好好整理一番!
五樣好東西是:
1.睡前喝豆漿睡前喝豆漿:豆漿富含100%的優質胺基酸,可製造充分的生長激素,促進身 體的新陳代謝,消耗體內多餘的醣份和脂肪,所以睡前喝豆漿,有減肥的的效果,這就是「胺基酸減肥法」,又叫「懶人減肥法」。 此外,大豆富含異黃酮素(天然的雌激素),可降低血液中的膽固醇,保護心臟,預防心肌梗塞,所以女生得心血管疾病的機率只有男生的六分之一,異黃酮素並可抑制人體鈣質的流失,還可預防與基因遺傳有關的乳癌與腸癌,因此睡前喝上一杯250cc的豆漿,冷熱甜淡隨意,可讓您 有一個好睡眠、好體質。
但是現在市面上的黃豆有80%是基因改造的,目前基因改造的食品對人體的影響如何還未可知,如何購買非基因改造豆漿,建議購買統一、味全、光泉、黑松、義美等各品牌,尤其義美豆漿便宜又無防腐劑喔,睡前喝比早上喝的效益更大。
2.吃水果比吃蔬菜好 吃水果比吃蔬菜好:當個「好色之徒」吧,吃水果要選香的,顏色鮮豔的,含有大量松脂,多吃對身體有益。且吃水果比吃蔬菜好,松脂成分可抗壓,如芒果要選土芒果,葡萄要吃紫葡萄,西瓜選無子大紅西瓜,香瓜選綠色的,哈蜜瓜要選肉色的,水果中以榴璉的松脂居第一。然今後別再吃葡萄柚因會抑制肝的解毒!
3.綠茶效益勝過水 綠茶效益勝過水:建議喝綠茶來代替水和紅茶,因水帶不走身上不好的物質,紅茶為已發酵的熟茶,因此綠茶優於紅茶,多喝綠茶可以降低巴金森,且綠茶含兒茶素,能保護關節軟骨緩解疼痛。另外,泡過後無味的綠茶包,可用來擦過敏的皮膚跟濕疹唷!可買超市「世家」的綠茶包,很便宜喔!
4.天天來杯咖啡吧 喝咖啡選阿拉伯豆:每天一杯咖啡,喝咖啡的好處是咖啡可抑制多巴胺L-Dopa,預防老化、巴金森氏症、防癌,咖啡會活化大腦命令四肢時所需要的傳導物,年老以後身手較為協調,壞處是喝咖啡會流失鈣與一些維他命。
懷孕前三個月禁喝,因易流產。此外,喝咖啡要選阿拉伯豆,不是爪哇豆,豆子要新鮮,放久了會產生黃麴毒素。建議可買超市雀巢咖啡粉,標示日本原裝,就是100% 阿拉伯豆喔!三合一的亦可。運動前喝咖啡更好。
5.將癌細胞改邪歸正的地瓜 地瓜導正病變細胞:地瓜含神經節肝酯,能導正病變細胞;且地瓜可以減肥,因為其澱粉是水溶性纖維,不會囤積體內。地瓜的甜味是多醣,對人體有益,比吃飯更有飽足感,建議一週可用一餐地瓜代替飯來吃。
地瓜愈紅愈甜愈好,烤的比水煮和蒸的好,且烤後連皮一起吃更好,超市有賣烤地瓜,一包100元。
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專作放射線之醫師,認為『微波爐』會利用電波少一個正價電子,運用水分子之震盪使食物變熱,所以食物易變成自由基,就會容易致癌。所以偶而方便用一下,最好還是少用『微波爐』最好!
以下文章值得參考
人體內的有毒物質主要來源於兩個途徑:一是大氣與水源中的污染物、通過呼吸及進餐而侵入人體內,鉛、鋁、汞等重金屬就是其代表;另一個是食物在體內代謝後的廢物,如自由基、硫化氫等。時下,清除體內垃圾已成健康時尚。下列方法可幫您及時清除體內毒素:1.主動咳嗽法: 自然界中的粉塵、金屬微粒及廢氣中的毒性物質,通過呼吸進入肺臟,既損害肺臟又通過血液迴圈而株連全身。借助主動咳嗽可以'清 掃'肺臟。每天到室外空氣清新處做深呼吸運動,深吸氣時緩緩抬起雙臂,然後主動咳嗽,使氣流從口、鼻中噴出,咳出痰液。2.飲水沖洗法 定時排便,縮短糞便在腸道內的停留時間,及時排出糞便中的毒素。每天清晨空腹喝一杯溫開水,有利於大便通暢以及毒素從尿液中排出。
3.運動 出汗法皮膚也是排泄毒素的途徑,主要通過出汗的方式,讓毒素隨汗液排出體外。
4.巧用食物法 ●常飲鮮果、鮮菜汁(不經炒煮),鮮果、鮮 菜汁是體內'清潔劑',牠們能排除體內堆積的毒素和廢物。●常吃海帶 ,海帶對放射性物質有特別的親和力,海帶膠質能促使體內的放射性物質隨著大號排出體外,從而減少放射性物質在人體內的積聚,也減少了放射性疾病的發生率。●常喝綠豆湯,綠豆湯能輔助排泄體內的毒素,促進機體的正常代謝。

Where Are You My Little Yellow Raincoat?








Need to move the piano

20 April 2010

I Did Some Doodles Recently















And thanks for the comments peeps! Rock! =)




19 April 2010

Love someone

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

Life’s a mess

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, Play.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

Be Hated.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

Love another human being.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

16 April 2010

Ten things I have learnt - Milton Glaser

1YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.
This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.


2IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.
One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?’ An irritated voice said ‘Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?’ I recognised the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to prepare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceedingly well prepared for my old age’ he said.


3SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.
This is a subtext of number one. There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must understand the ‘whole’ before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.


4PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.
Early in my career I wanted to be professional, that was my complete aspiration in my early life because professionals seemed to know everything – not to mention they got paid for it. Later I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. So if you want to get your car fixed you go to a mechanic who knows how to deal with transmission problems in the same way each time. I suppose if you needed brain surgery you wouldn’t want the doctor to fool around and invent a new way of connecting your nerve endings. Please do it in the way that has worked in the past.Unfortunately in our field, in the so-called creative – I hate that word because it is misused so often. I also hate the fact that it is used as a noun. Can you imagine calling someone a creative? Anyhow, when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.


5LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’


6STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
I think this idea first occurred to me when I was looking at a marvellous etching of a bull by Picasso. It was an illustration for a story by Balzac called The Hidden Masterpiece. I am sure that you all know it. It is a bull that is expressed in 12 different styles going from very naturalistic version of a bull to an absolutely reductive single line abstraction and everything else along the way. What is clear just from looking at this single print is that style is irrelevant. In every one of these cases, from extreme abstraction to acute naturalism they are extraordinary regardless of the style. It’s absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty. I must say that for old design professionals it is a problem because the field is driven by economic consideration more than anything else. Style change is usually linked to economic factors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when people see too much of the same thing too often. So every ten years or so there is a stylistic shift and things are made to look different. Typefaces go in and out of style and the visual system shifts a little bit. If you are around for a long time as a designer, you have an essential problem of what to do. I mean, after all, you have developed a vocabulary, a form that is your own. It is one of the ways that you distinguish yourself from your peers, and establish your identity in the field. How you maintain your own belief system and preferences becomes a real balancing act. The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging to another moment in time. And there are sad stories such as the one about Cassandre, arguably the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn’t make a living at the end of his life and committed suicide.But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.


7HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the organ that is most susceptible to change and regeneration of all the organs in the body. I have a friend named Gerald Edelman who was a great scholar of brain studies and he says that the analogy of the brain to a computer is pathetic. The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on. And he believes that the brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fully conscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have. I was fascinated by a story in a newspaper a few years ago about the search for perfect pitch. A group of scientists decided that they were going to find out why certain people have perfect pitch. You know certain people hear a note precisely and are able to replicate it at exactly the right pitch. Some people have relevant pitch; perfect pitch is rare even among musicians. The scientists discovered – I don’t know how – that among people with perfect pitch the brain was different. Certain lobes of the brain had undergone some change or deformation that was always present with those who had perfect pitch. This was interesting enough in itself. But then they discovered something even more fascinating. If you took a bunch of kids and taught them to play the violin at the age of 4 or 5 after a couple of years some of them developed perfect pitch, and in all of those cases their brain structure had changed. Well what could that mean for the rest of us? We tend to believe that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, although we do not generally believe that everything we do affects the brain. I am convinced that if someone was to yell at me from across the street my brain could be affected and my life might changed. That is why your mother always said, ‘Don’t hang out with those bad kids.’ Mama was right. Thought changes our life and our behaviour. I also believe that drawing works in the same way. I am a great advocate of drawing, not in order to become an illustrator, but because I believe drawing changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive. It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not so easy.


8DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.
Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real way, solving any problem is more important than being right. There is a significant sense of self-righteousness in both the art and design world. Perhaps it begins at school. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The theory of the avant garde is that as an individual you can transform the world, which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.Schools encourage the idea of not compromising and defending your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usually all about the nature of compromise. You just have to know what to compromise. Blind pursuit of your own ends which excludes the possibility that others may be right does not allow for the fact that in design we are always dealing with a triad – the client, the audience and you.Ideally, making everyone win through acts of accommodation is desirable. But self-righteousness is often the enemy. Self-righteousness and narcissism generally come out of some sort of childhood trauma, which we do not have to go into. It is a consistently difficult thing in human affairs. Some years ago I read a most remarkable thing about love, that also applies to the nature of co-existing with others. It was a quotation from Iris Murdoch in her obituary. It read ‘ Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.’ Isn’t that fantastic! The best insight on the subject of love that one can imagine.


9ON AGING.
Last year someone gave me a charming book by Roger Rosenblatt called ‘Ageing Gracefully’ I got it on my birthday. I did not appreciate the title at the time but it contains a series of rules for ageing gracefully. The first rule is the best. Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter that what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last. Then I heard a marvellous joke that seemed related to rule number 10. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘Ok. Got any cabbage?’


10TELL THE TRUTH.
The rabbit joke is relevant because it occurred to me that looking for a cabbage in a butcher’s shop might be like looking for ethics in the design field. It may not be the most obvious place to find either. It’s interesting to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a significant amount of useful information about appropriate behaviour towards clients and other designers, but not a word about a designer’s relationship to the public. We expect a butcher to sell us eatable meat and that he doesn’t misrepresent his wares. I remember reading that during the Stalin years in Russia that everything labelled veal was actually chicken. I can’t imagine what everything labelled chicken was. We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher? Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients. ‘Do no harm’ is an admonition to doctors concerning their relationship to their patients, not to their fellow practitioners or the drug companies. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more central to what we do.

-Milton Glaser